The invention disclosed herein is a modification in design and application of my invention as disclosed in Ser. Nos. 366,372 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,467,349, and 466,973 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,486,774, which are improvements of my prior invention, U.S. Pat. No. 4,261,012, dated Apr. 7, 1981. The prior art discussed in that patent pending is still considered to be the most relevant prior art together with Dyson, U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,134.
This invention relates to a system of the type enabling a subject using the system to view a picture showing the subject as she (or he) will appear if her body is physically reproportioned. For instance, such a system when used in a weight loss clinic will allow a customer to sample the effect that a certain amount of weight loss will have on her appearance prior to losing that amount of weight. The system when used in a figure salon will allow a customer to sample the effect that the reduction of, and/or the toning of certain areas of the body such as the bust, waist, hips, thighs, etc. would have on her appearance prior to the reduction or and/or the toning of those certain areas. In either instance the system will have the ability to produce an instant "before and after" picture of the customer (i.e., before the weight loss, after the weight loss) so that the customer can better evaluate the effect a prescribed exercise and/or diet program will have on her appearance before commiting herself to that program.
My invention is broadly directed to a system for displaying to a customer a view of that customer as though the customer had actually lost a certain amount of weight or reduced and/or toned certain areas of her body; which system comprises means to record and display a full figure image of the customer; means to vary the dimensions of the image; and means to display the reproportioned image. In the preferred embodiment, the system comprises a video camera, a frame grabber, a CPU, an image buffer, a memory, and a video screen. The video camera takes the image of the customer which is digitized by the frame grabber, stored in memory and ultimately displayed on the video screen. Through use of the CPU, the stored image is varied along the horizontal and/or vertical axes to provide a re-proportioned image of the customer. Preferably, this is accomplished by stretching and/or shrinking rasters horizontally and/or vertically along the full height of the image, based on a calculated stretch and/or shrink factor. For example, I can scale the image which is stored in memory to reflect any bust, waist, hip, thigh, etc. measurement, and/or body weight that the customer hopes to attain by following the exercise and/or diet program offered by the figure salon or weight loss clinic.